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From the moment of their
departure, the travellers moved with great velocity. They longed to leave
behind them the desert, which had so nearly been fatal to them.
About a quarter-past
nine in the morning, they caught a glimpse of some signs of vegetation: herbage
floating on that sea of sand, and announcing, as the weeds upon the ocean did
to Christopher Columbus, the nearness of the shore—green shoots peeping
up timidly between pebbles that were, in their turn, to be the rocks of that
vast expanse.
Hills, but of trifling
height, were seen in wavy lines upon the horizon. Their profile, muffled by the
heavy mist, was defined but vaguely. The monotony, however, was beginning to
disappear.
The doctor hailed with
joy the new country thus disclosed, and, like a seaman on lookout at the mast-head,
he was ready to shout aloud:
“Land, ho!
land!”
An hour later the
continent spread broadly before their gaze, still wild in aspect, but less
flat, less denuded, and with a few trees standing out against the gray sky.
“We are in a
civilized country at last!” said the hunter.
“Civilized? Well,
that’s one way of speaking; but there are no people to be seen
yet.”
“It will not be
long before we see them,” said Ferguson, “at our present rate of
travel.”
“Are we still in
the negro country, doctor?”
“Yes, and on our
way to the country of the Arabs.”
“What! real Arabs,
sir, with their camels?”
“No, not many
camels; they are scarce, if not altogether unknown, in these regions. We must
go a few degrees farther north to see them.”
“What a
pity!”
“And why,
Joe?”
“Because, if the
wind fell contrary, they might be of use to us.”
“How so?”
“Well, sir,
it’s just a notion that’s got into my head: we might hitch them to
the car, and make them tow us along. What do you say to that, doctor?”
“Poor Joe! Another
person had that idea in advance of you. It was used by a very gifted French
author— M. Mery—in a romance, it is true. He has his travellers
drawn along in a balloon by a team of camels; then a lion comes up, devours the
camels, swallows the tow-rope, and hauls the balloon in their stead; and so on
through the story. You see that the whole thing is the top-flower of fancy, but
has nothing in common with our style of locomotion.”
Joe, a little cut down
at learning that his idea had been used already, cudgelled his wits to imagine
what animal could have devoured the lion; but he could not guess it, and so
quietly went on scanning the appearance of the country.
A lake of medium extent
stretched away before him, surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, which yet
could not be dignified with the name of mountains. There were winding valleys,
numerous and fertile, with their tangled thickets of the most various trees.
The African oil-tree rose above the mass, with leaves fifteen feet in length
upon its stalk, the latter studded with sharp thorns; the bombax, or
silk-cotton-tree, filled the wind, as it swept by, with the fine down of its
seeds; the pungent odors of the pendanus, the “kenda” of the Arabs,
perfumed the air up to the height where the Victoria was sailing; the papaw-tree,
with its palm-shaped leaves; the sterculier, which produces the Soudan-nut; the
baobab, and the banana-tree, completed the luxuriant flora of these
inter-tropical regions.
“The country is
superb!” said the doctor.
“Here are some
animals,” added Joe. “Men are not far away.”
“Oh, what
magnificent elephants!” exclaimed Kennedy. “Is there no way to get
a little shooting?”
“How could we
manage to halt in a current as strong as this? No, Dick; you must taste a
little of the torture of Tantalus just now. You shall make up for it
afterward.”
And, in truth, there was
enough to excite the fancy of a sportsman. Dick’s heart fairly leaped in
his breast as he grasped the butt of his Purdy.
The fauna of the region
were as striking as its flora. The wild-ox revelled in dense herbage that often
concealed his whole body; gray, black, and yellow elephants of the most
gigantic size burst headlong, like a living hurricane, through the forests,
breaking, rending, tearing down, devastating every thing in their path; upon the
woody slopes of the hills trickled cascades and springs flowing northward;
there, too, the hippopotami bathed their huge forms, splashing and snorting as
they frolicked in the water, and lamantines, twelve feet long, with bodies like
seals, stretched themselves along the banks, turning up toward the sun their
rounded teats swollen with milk.
It was a whole menagerie
of rare and curious beasts in a wondrous hot-house, where numberless birds with
plumage of a thousand hues gleamed and fluttered in the sunshine.
By this prodigality of
Nature, the doctor recognized the splendid kingdom of Adamova.
“We are now
beginning to trench upon the realm of modern discovery. I have taken up the
lost scent of preceding travellers. It is a happy chance, my friends, for we shall
be enabled to link the toils of Captains Burton and Speke with the explorations
of Dr. Barth. We have left the Englishmen behind us, and now have caught up
with the Hamburger. It will not be long, either, before we arrive at the
extreme point attained by that daring explorer.”
“It seems to me
that there is a vast extent of country between the two explored routes,”
remarked Kennedy; “at least, if I am to judge by the distance that we
have made.”
“It is easy to
determine: take the map and see what is the longitude of the southern point of
Lake Ukereoue, reached by Speke.”
“It is near the
thirty-seventh degree.”
“And the city of
Yola, which we shall sight this evening, and to which Barth penetrated, what is
its position?”
“It is about in
the twelfth degree of east longitude.”
“Then there are
twenty-five degrees, or, counting sixty miles to each, about fifteen hundred
miles in all.”
“A nice little
walk,” said Joe, “for people who have to go on foot.”
“It will be
accomplished, however. Livingstone and Moffat are pushing on up this line
toward the interior. Nyassa, which they have discovered, is not far from Lake
Tanganayika, seen by Burton. Ere the close of the century these regions will,
undoubtedly, be explored. But,” added the doctor, consulting his compass,
“I regret that the wind is carrying us so far to the westward. I wanted
to get to the north.”
After twelve hours of
progress, the Victoria found herself on the confines of Nigritia. The first
inhabitants of this region, the Chouas Arabs, were feeding their wandering
flocks. The immense summits of the Atlantika Mountains seen above the
horizon—mountains that no European foot had yet scaled, and whose height
is computed to be ten thousand feet! Their western slope determines the flow of
all the waters in this region of Africa toward the ocean. They are the
Mountains of the Moon to this part of the continent.
At length a real river
greeted the gaze of our travellers, and, by the enormous ant-hills seen in its
vicinity, the doctor recognized the Benoue, one of the great tributaries of the
Niger, the one which the natives have called “The Fountain of the
Waters.”
“This
river,” said the doctor to his companions, “will, one day, be the
natural channel of communication with the interior of Nigritia. Under the
command of one of our brave captains, the steamer Pleiad has already ascended
as far as the town of Yola. You see that we are not in an unknown
country.”
Numerous slaves were
engaged in the labors of the field, cultivating sorgho, a kind of millet which
forms the chief basis of their diet; and the most stupid expressions of
astonishment ensued as the Victoria sped past like a meteor. That evening the
balloon halted about forty miles from Yola, and ahead of it, but in the
distance, rose the two sharp cones of Mount Mendif.
The doctor threw out his
anchors and made fast to the top of a high tree; but a very violent wind beat
upon the balloon with such force as to throw it over on its side, thus
rendering the position of the car sometimes extremely dangerous. Ferguson did
not close his all night, and he was repeatedly on the point of cutting the
anchor-rope and scudding away before the gale. At length, however, the storm
abated, and the oscillations of the balloon ceased to be alarming.
On the morrow the wind
was more moderate, but it carried our travellers away from the city of Yola,
which recently rebuilt by the Fouillans, excited Ferguson’s curiosity.
However, he had to make up his mind to being borne farther to the northward and
even a little to the east.
Kennedy proposed to halt
in this fine hunting-country, and Joe declared that the need of fresh meat was
beginning to be felt; but the savage customs of the country, the attitude of
the population, and some shots fired at the Victoria, admonished the doctor to
continue his journey. They were then crossing a region that was the scene of
massacres and burnings, and where warlike conflicts between the barbarian
sultans, contending for their power amid the most atrocious carnage, never
cease.
Numerous and populous
villages of long low huts stretched away between broad pasture-fields whose
dense herbage was besprinkled with violet-colored blossoms. The huts, looking
like huge beehives, were sheltered behind bristling palisades. The wild
hill-sides and hollows frequently reminded the beholder of the glens in the
Highlands of Scotland, as Kennedy more than once remarked.
In spite of all he could
do, the doctor bore directly to the northeast, toward Mount Mendif, which was
lost in the midst of environing clouds. The lofty summits of these mountains
separate the valley of the Niger from the basin of Lake Tchad.
Soon afterward was seen
the Bagele, with its eighteen villages clinging to its flanks like a whole
brood of children to their mother’s bosom—a magnificent spectacle
for the beholder whose gaze commanded and took in the entire picture at one
view. Even the ravines were seen to be covered with fields of rice and of
arachides.
By three o’clock
the Victoria was directly in front of Mount Mendif. It had been impossible to
avoid it; the only thing to be done was to cross it. The doctor, by means of a
temperature increased to one hundred and eighty degrees, gave the balloon a
fresh ascensional force of nearly sixteen hundred pounds, and it went up to an
elevation of more than eight thousand feet, the greatest height attained during
the journey. The temperature of the atmosphere was so much cooler at that point
that the aeronauts had to resort to their blankets and thick coverings.
Ferguson was in haste to
descend; the covering of the balloon gave indications of bursting, but in the
meanwhile he had time to satisfy himself of the volcanic origin of the
mountain, whose extinct craters are now but deep abysses. Immense accumulations
of bird-guano gave the sides of Mount Mendif the appearance of calcareous
rocks, and there was enough of the deposit there to manure all the lands in the
United Kingdom.
At five o’clock
the Victoria, sheltered from the south winds, went gently gliding along the
slopes of the mountain, and stopped in a wide clearing remote from any
habitation. The instant it touched the soil, all needful precautions were taken
to hold it there firmly; and Kennedy, fowling-piece in hand, sallied out upon
the sloping plain. Ere long, he returned with half a dozen wild ducks and a
kind of snipe, which Joe served up in his best style. The meal was heartily
relished, and the night was passed in undisturbed and refreshing slumber.
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